Sports

NFL commissioner can’t see double standard

It often seems that the most difficult lessons to learn are those you can’t miss.

Three Aprils ago, in the wake of the Don Imus tempest, big shots who had been eager to be heard on his show — national news anchors, prominent politicians, sportscasters, columnists — were left to explain their availability.

Could they have legitimately been shocked and appalled that Imus characterized the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed ho’s”?

Of course not.

Imus generally elevated those big-shot sessions to a far more sanitary level, but before and after such segments, it was rude, crude, lewd putdowns, smears and slanders, his show’s daily formula.

Did these big shots not know that? No one even dared such a ludicrous self-defense.

So then, during the weeks of tumult that followed Imus’s hateful crack and dismissal, these big shots were stuck to him; they’d placed their personal and business promotion above higher-minded social judgment. Instead of saying to Imus’s producer, “Thanks, but no thanks,” they went with, “What time?”

Wednesday, the day NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Ben Roethlisberger for his recidivist misconduct by sexually objectifying young women, Goodell was a guest on the WFAN show hosted by Craig Carton and Boomer Esiason — a show predicated on the clever-free sexual objectification and degradation of young women, the program that replaced Imus.

Clearly, Goodell, who’d previously been on with Carton and Esiason, didn’t see or didn’t care about the same-day connection between suspending Roethlisberger and lending his and the NFL’s name to such a show.

Carton and Esiason, in the transparent tradition of Imus, cleaned it up for Goodell. They weren’t nearly as circumspect eight days earlier when NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who last year suspended Sean Avery for sexually degrading a woman, chose to be an in-studio guest.

Wednesday, before suspending Roethlisberger, Goodell explained to Carton and Esiason his position on the Steelers’ QB. “The real issue here,” he said, “is bad judgment.”

Imagine that, bad judgment.

And moments after Goodell was off the air, it was back to the gratuitous sexual degradation of women on WFAN.

Kay cornered in calling out Yanks

Monday on his 1050 radio show, Michael Kay and sidekick Don La Greca slapped around Jerry Manuel, trashing the Mets’ manager as a clown.

Whether Kay’s position is legit is not at issue. But this is: Could/would Kay, as a Yankees’ YES man, speak similarly about a Yankee manager or executive? Why not mock team president Randy Levine for such obscene ticket prices tacked to new Yankee Stadium seats that for a second straight season — even on sweet weekend afternoons with the Yanks in first place — the best and better seats go empty?

Next, Kay stood on the corner of Unlikely and Impossible while making an authoritative claim. Three hours before the start of the Cubs-Mets series, he said that calling up Ike Davis, that day, would mean an increase of 10,000 Citi Field ticket-buyers per game.

La Greca gave that his rubber stamp — yep, Davis is worth 10,000 more at every game. They sounded as if they actually believed such a definitive claim, an increase of 10,000 tickets per game in response to Davis’ call-up.

➤ In 1989, when the NCAA dumped ESPN as an early-rounds carrier of Division I basketball tournament telecasts and sold it all to CBS — an ungrateful, money-first kick in the fanny to ESPN in exchange for elevating the tournament to can’t-miss status — the NCAA’s boss at the time, Dick Schultz, bragged that the tournament is off cable, was now fully in the hands of “free TV.”

Yesterday, the tournament expanded to 68 teams and shared between CBS and Turner networks — another money-first move — and the NCAA is boasting that’s its tournament is being shared by cable TV.

Losing a legend


He knows it, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t. Ernie Harwell, 92 and as good a man as he was a great baseball broadcaster, is days from the end.

In September, he was given three to six months, thus he’s late in overtime. Very soon, when you read and hear the eulogies, none will be exaggerated: No finer man ever called a ballgame.

➤ New Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly, with ESPN Radio’s Colin Cowherd, yesterday, said that previous ND coaches won “graduation percentage awards,” but he knows that his agenda is to win. Charming.

➤Adhering to the adage that “You can’t tell the ballplayers without a scorecard! Get your scorecards!” reader Tim Hanley bought one before taking his seat at Monday’s Cubs-Mets. Only then did he realize that the Jackie Robinson salute was still on. “Everyone, and on both teams, was wearing No. 42.”

➤ There are pros who, no matter how talented, ensure that you can’t root for them. Alfonso Soriano, who nine years ago with the Yankees would go into his home run jog on shots that didn’t clear the wall, is still at it. He did it Monday against the Mets. Nine years later, he still doesn’t care. This season Soriano will be paid $19 million, still not enough to make him run to first.

➤ Chris Berman has signed a contract extension with ESPN, providing him, perhaps, with one more opportunity to be recognized and recalled for something better than tired, self-promotional shtick.

➤ Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert on the Goldman Sachs indictment: “What’s the problem? There’s nothing wrong with selling investors a deal that’s designed to fail. The Chicago Cubs do it every year.”

➤ At last! Fabulous text message poll during yesterday afternoon’s Yanks-A’s: “Have you ever called out of work or school to attend a day game?” With 85 percent, “Yes” won.